Halo: Glasslands

by Karen Traviss

Page 52

  Vaz found himself drowning in questions, like why people hadn’t noticed al these kids disappearing for a few weeks and then miraculously being found alive, but the colonies were a long way from Earth, and a long way from one another.

  There were only seventy-odd kids involved. Kids went missing al the time. They were spread across so many planets that no cop would ever have spotted a pattern in al that.

  So like Devereaux said—why bother with the clones? Why the hell go to all that trouble? Halsey didn’t need to.

  The reports were written in disturbingly neutral clinical terminology, but they al boiled down to one thing. Naomi, like al the other Spartan kids, was terrified and wanted to go home.

  Vaz read the names of the psychologists and medical officers at the bottom of those reports careful y. He wanted to remember who the monsters real y were. The one currently imprisoned on the deck below him couldn’t have done it without them.

  You rotten bastards. You took an oath to do no harm.

  He wasn’t sure if he grasped half of the medical stuff in front of him, but he understood enough to realize that he didn’t want to go on reading about the drugs and surgery, the brutal training, or the assessments of the kids’ pain and stress levels. It would surface in nightmares one day. He was sure of it. He didn’t want to know how Halsey changed them out of al recognition.

  He had to, though. If the people he served with had gone through this, the least he could do was read it. He stuck at it for half an hour, getting every bit as angry as BB had warned him he would, until he had to take a breather or explode. He flicked forward to the end of the file, knowing there would be no happy ending, and found he was looking at a subfile of social workers’ reports about Naomi’s parents.

  Even in a situation like that, with outrage piled on outrage without a thought for how far the ripples of misery would spread, it was stil a shock to see what had happened to the Sentzkes.

  Their daughter had been returned to them, or so they thought, and for a while they’d been relieved to have her back. Then she fel il and spent eighteen months dying. The Sentzkes were told it was a genetic il ness. The social reports tossed in the consequences of that lie as if it was just a footnote:

  Mrs. Sentzke is concerned that the genetic abnormality will affect any other children she might bear. She has asked to be sterilized and the decision is putting considerable strain on the marriage.

  The next page was a coroner’s report, an inquest, dated six months later. Naomi’s mother had final y slashed her wrists. There was a comment from the coroner about her inability to deal with her bereavement.

  Vaz read it a few times, unable to get past that paragraph. Had Osman actual y told Naomi al that? He’d have no idea until he asked, but if she hadn’t, the worst news of al would fal to him. Part of him resented Osman for not giving Naomi the ful story right away.

  God Almighty. How do I tell Naomi that?

  Her father, Staffan, seemed to be made of more obstinate stuff, though. The social worker had included a number of police reports detailing how he insisted that the girl who’d come back wasn’t his daughter, and that it was al a dirty government conspiracy. There was no genetic abnormality like that in his family, he said.

  Vaz was now riveted. This factory worker, this ordinary guy, hadn’t realized just how right he was. Vaz scrol ed through the pages as fast as he could, but then he found himself reading Naomi’s service record. The trail went cold. There was no more mention of Staffan Sentzke.

  “BB,” he said. “Quick question. Sitrep on Sansar, Outer Colonies. ”

  “Glassed,” BB said, not even materializing.

  Vaz thought of that Staffan, screwed by his own kind and then glassed by the Covenant, and wondered if there was any justice left in the world.

  He lay on his bunk for a long time, staring up at the deckhead in chaotic, numb anger. More than seventy families had been through something like that, and the only thing that had put an end to their misery was the Covenant. How many of them had been as tragic as Naomi’s parents? How the hel was he going to tel her any of this?

  He swung his legs off the bunk, determined to come back later and finish reading every last damn word. One thought wouldn’t go away, though.

  Halsey was stil down there, one deck below. She’d led a charmed life, paid and praised and given nice big budgets, while al the time she was no better than any of the other war criminals throughout history who’d been tried and hanged, or who’d never faced justice at al .

  Vaz knew a little about World War II because it was stil compulsory history in the school he’d attended. Russia didn’t forget her wars. If he’d run into Dr. Josef Mengele five hundred years ago and known what the man had done, or would do, and if he’d shot him, then he’d have been hailed as a patriot. Everyone would have said he’d done humanity a favor.

  Now he had a modern-day Mengele right here.

  Vaz was halfway down the passage before the thought started crystal izing. By the time he got to the ladder that would take him to the deck below, he’d already kissed good-bye to his service career and his freedom. He found himself outside Halsey’s temporary cel with one hand on the door and the other resting on his sidearm. He thought of al the scientists responsible for wartime atrocities and how many of them made themselves too useful to hang, and died fat and rich and respected at a ripe old age. That was when he decided that the world could probably get by just fine without another Spartan program.

  He put one finger on the lock override.

  “Vasily,” said the voice behind him. No, it wasn’t behind him; it was somewhere overhead, in one of the ship’s broadcast speakers, like the voice of God. “Vaz, I told you it would make you angry, didn’t I? Come on. Walk away from it. ”

  “Nobody ever stops monsters until it’s too late,” he said. “We can’t claim we didn’t know about this one. ”

  “But there’s always another one to take their place, Vaz,” BB said. “And I think Naomi would be happier if you weren’t serving life for blowing Halsey’s brains out. ”

  Vaz paused for a good ten seconds, hating himself for hesitating when he knew this woman was probably never going to face real justice. What did he have to lose? No kids, no family. Not half as much as the colonists whose lives she’d wrecked.

  “Vaz— leave her to Parangosky. ” BB’s tone was firmer now. “She’s much more proficient than you at making people suffer. Go find Naomi. Go on. ”

  Vaz felt as if he’d suddenly sobered up. It didn’t stop the anger or the seething hatred, but he felt both stupid and justified, which was hard to handle.

  BB was looking out for him, though. That was what friends were for.

  “Thanks, BB. ” He rubbed his face with both hands and started walking away. Coward, a voice said inside him. Coward. “Yeah, I’l do that. I hope I never have to regret this. ”

  “You know you already do,” BB said. “Now go press your best pants. We hand over Halsey, and then we go home for the memorial ceremony. ”

  Vaz had plenty of people to commemorate. It stil seemed pretty lavish to slip back to Earth in the middle of a mission. “They real y need us there?”

  “Yes. The Arbiter’s attending. ”

  Old enemies normal y left it a decent few years before they showed up expressing respect. This was just months. It was stil al way too raw, but then today was a very raw kind of day al around.

  “Great,” Vaz said, realizing that every step he took away from that door was proof that he was just like everyone else, compliant and gutless, unable to do what his conscience demanded. “Let’s forgive every evil bastard in the galaxy. ”

  VOI MEMORIAL, KENYA, EARTH: MARCH 2553.

  “No Army?” Margaret Parangosky, leaning on her cane, watched Hood taking his leave of the Arbiter. “He didn’t invite any brass from the Army?

  Wel , that’s goddamn rude, even by my standards. ”

  She turned to Osman and did that lit
tle nod that always accompanied a tip on handling interservice politics. “Even if you think that the Navy and Marines were the only ones fighting the war, then you stil treat the rest as if they were right there at the front. And an awful lot of them were. ”

  The coral-pink dawn had given way to a bright, crisp morning, and the memorial, the wing of a Pelican dropship inscribed with the names of the fal en, had lost its stark, monolithic look as the sun climbed higher. Osman hoped that the media had managed to get the best dramatic images of the lonely black shape silhouetted against a sky that was a convenient metaphor for shed blood. She wondered how anyone could possibly have inscribed al the names that should have been there in such a limited space, but that was the way history tended to play these things.

  Something to address one day when I’m stuck at Bravo-6.

  The ceremony was like any other social gathering. There were those who came for the main business of the day, which was grieving, and there were those who had come because it was a requirement. Chief Mendez looked immaculate in his dress uniform and also very pissed off. Osman could see why. She noticed the crowd part as the Arbiter took his leave of Hood—with a handshake again—and walked away to where his guards were waiting.

  Parangosky watched with narrowed eyes, leaning on her cane. Osman couldn’t tel if her mind was on Hood or Halsey.

  “So you think Phil ips is ready to be inserted,” she said at last.

  “Ready or not, ma’am, he’s the only person who can get into Sanghelios right now. And we real y need intel. ”

  “‘Vadam’s not an idiot. He’l expect us to send a spy. ”

  “But he probably won’t expect that spy to have contacts on the ground. ”

  “Indeed. And if the worst happens?”

  “BB can deal with it. ”

  The intel igence business was ful of euphemism. BB would give Phil ips a lethal dose of nerve agent if he was captured and interrogated. It was easier for the AI to decide when things had gone too far than for Phil ips to make the cal himself. Osman stood back from herself and watched her spook side not getting upset about the idea. It was sobering.

  “I’ve sent Spenser to mooch around Venezia,” Parangosky said, gaze stil fixed on the Sangheili shuttle. Its drives were powering up. “He was getting bored. Bad sign. ”

  “They’re stil number two on our bugger-about list. ”

  “Glad they’re not forgotten. We need to focus resources on the Sangheili, so that means stopping the colonies complicating the issue. Keep an eye on that and give him a hand if need be, wil you?”

  “My pleasure, ma’am. ”

  “A Sangheili attack on them wouldn’t upset us at al . ”

  “I’l do my best. ”

  Parangosky pushed herself upright and flexed her hands. “Now for dessert. I’ve got a conversation to have with my favorite scientist. ” She’d waited a damned long time to get Halsey but she seemed more resigned than triumphant. “I wouldn’t cal it an interrogation because there aren’t many answers I want from her. I just want to tel her a few things. And then she can make herself useful. But BB wil brief you on that when Stanley’s under way. ”

  Osman knew something big was looming but had learned long ago that Parangosky would tel her what she needed to know when the time was right. She’d never left her in the dark without a good reason. “Have you spoken to her at al , ma’am?”

  “Not yet. Just trying to locate my own moral high ground at the moment. ”

  “You’ve never actual y said that you regret the Spartan program. ”

  “Regret’s an insultingly useless thing so long after the event, but I think it’s better than claiming you did what you thought was right at the time.

  Good faith. Ah, I can’t be doing with that nonsense—it’s a politician’s defense. I knew it was wrong and I stil did it. So I’l stand up and admit it. ”

  Osman wondered if Parangosky was getting ready to die. If the woman was il , BB probably wouldn’t tel Osman. But there was a great finality about the admiral, a tidying up of loose ends, and it panicked Osman every time she noticed it. But no other admiral had served so long past their active service date, and she might just have decided to retire at last.

  “You’re going to give a statement to the Defense Committee, then. ”

  “When my resignation won’t compromise security, yes. ” Parangosky smiled. She did that more often than people imagined, but rarely outside her office. “You’l be appointed rear admiral in the April list, by the way, and then the path’s clear. ”

  The news didn’t sound quite as good to Osman as she’d once thought it would. “What if I’m not ready for it, ma’am?”

  “Then I’l just have to stay alive until you are. ” She glanced past Osman at her driver. “Good team, Kilo-Five. ”

  Osman nodded. “They’ve real y gel ed. A bit baffled and impatient without real fighting to do, but they’re adapting to intel igence work very wel .

  Even Phil ips. Good cal , ma’am. ”

  “I’m glad that’s worked out. ” Parangosky began walking back to the memorial. “You always need a core team who’l do anything for you and you alone. Loyalty’s everything, Serin. But you know that. ”

  Osman fol owed her back to the memorial, more out of concern than to see what she would do. Parangosky contemplated one of the plaques in silence for a while. It was Halsey’s. It was almost as if she wanted to lock it in her memory to convince herself that something had final y come to pass. Then she moved along to the plaque commemorating the Spartans and laid her hand on it for just a moment, chin lowered.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  She looked back over her shoulder at Osman, half shrugged, then turned to where her driver was waiting. Everyone paused for a moment to watch her go. It was rare for her to appear in public.